Solar energy become cheapest source of new electricity

With the coming of the new year it is worth to mention that on the global energy markets the solar power for the first time become the cheapest source of new electricity against basic commodities. In the past there has been a places where this has happened, especially controversial auction in the Middle East, for example, the outcome of which reached a record low cost for solar energy. But now the non-subsidized solar energy begins to overtake the coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and new solar projects in emerging markets are less costly than building wind farms.

Solar investment started from virtually nothing five years ago and grew to a hefty sum. Much of this is related to China, which creates a lot of solar projects and helps other countries to finance their.

This year was remarkable for solar energy. The auctions, which private companies compete for massive contracts to supply electricity, achieved record after record for cheaper solar power. They started in January to produce electricity at 64 USD per MWh in India, then in August in Chile price reached 29.10 USD per MWh. This is a record cheap electricity, which is about half the price of competitive coal energy.

Renewable energy is entering an era of undercutting. These are new contracts, but there are many projects that will finish this year. When all completed projects in 2016 is estimated in the coming months, probably the total amount of solar photovoltaic systems globally will surpass wind sources first. The latest forecasts point that the energy market will reach 70 GWh of newly installed solar projects in 2016 against 59 GWh of wind projects.

The overall shift towards clean energy can be more expensive for richer countries, where demand for electricity remained unchanged or decreased, and the new solar energy must compete with coal and gas plants worth billions of dollars. In countries that add new energy capacity as quickly as possible but, renewable energy will overtake any other technology in most of the world, without subsidies.